The son of a clergyman, he attended St Edmund’s School, Canterbury. It was soon a feature of the daily round in Knightsbridge to see a procession of small boys in conker-coloured uniforms, doffing their caps to motorists who stopped to allow them over the pedestrian crossings on their way to games at the Duke of York’s Headquarters in the King’s Road.Stuart Townend did not emerge from the world of academe His skill was rather that of organisation. From the first it was international – in the aftermath of the Second World War, Townend believed that the best way to keep the peace was by bringing the world’s young together at school age.The Townends took a property in Hans Place, targeting a mixture of English (two-thirds) and foreign children (one-third – many the offspring of diplomats, but some coming from as far away as South America). They raised £600 to get the enterprise going, calling it Hill House after the house, La Colline, in Lausanne where they had for two years run a school for 16-year-olds in skiing and climbing. Discipline and good manners come next and, last of all, preparation for the next school.Townend had started the school from nothing He sold his car; his wife sold most of her jewellery.

If a child’s happy and loves coming to school, he or she can do anything. The school which had only 112 pupils when its most famous boy, Prince Charles, arrived in 1956, now has over 1,032.
“Our principles are back to front,” declared the Colonel in 1999, when he was 90: We put safety first – any teacher who leaves a child unsupervised is sacked on the spot – and then the child’s happiness. “A child’s mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled” was the motto that Stuart Townend – “the Colonel” – chose for Hill House, the pre-prep (and later preparatory) school which he founded with his wife, Beatrice, in London in 1951 More than 50 years later, he was still in charge. Henry Stewart (“Stuart”) Townend, athlete, soldier, schoolmaster and administrator: born Shrawardine, Shropshire 24 April 1909; OBE 1948; Headmaster, Hill House School 1951-2002; married 1936 Beatrice Lord (died 1984; one son); died London 26 October 2002. but maybe I’d like to be remembered as someone who wasn’t careful, but had a lot of fun.”John Exshaw.

Asked how he would like to be remembered, de Toth replied, “I don’t give a damn. In 1970, de Toth produced the weak spaghetti-western derivative El Condor.In later years, de Toth continued to be involved behind the scenes, contributing to the special effects on Superman (1978) – for which he would have been entitled to an Academy Award had he cared to claim credit – and acting as second unit director on Lion of the Desert (1981).In 1994, he published his memoirs, entitled Fragments: portraits from the inside, and in 1996 collaborated with Anthony Slide on the book De Toth on de Toth: putting the drama in front of the camera. He then began a long association with the producer Harry Saltzman, acting as executive producer on the third film starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer, Billion Dollar Brain (1967), and taking over as director from Ren?l?nt on the tough and uncompromising war film Play Dirty (1968). After making The Two-Headed Spy (1959) in Britain with Jack Hawkins, de Toth directed his last – and perhaps his best – western, Day of the Outlaw (1959), a savage tale set in a snowbound town and starring Robert Ryan and Burl Ives.When David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) fell behind schedule, de Toth was called in as second unit director, scouting locations by air in Spain, and setting up both the famous attack on the Turkish troop train and the Arab charge on Aqaba in the desert of Almeria.

Starring Cameron Mitchell as Ross, the film was the first attempt to show the horrors of drug addiction on the screen, and de Toth was justly praised for his efforts. The film also provided a prominent early role for Charles Bronson as Price’s mute assistant.De Toth’s Monkey on My Back (1957) was based on the autobiography of the former boxing champion and Second World War hero Barney Ross, who became addicted to morphine while being treated for wounds in the Pacific. De Toth managed to integrate the 3-D effects into the story as smoothly as possible, although the most effective scene has the black-cloaked Price hunting the film’s heroine Phyllis Kirk through the gaslit streets of New York. Starring Vincent Price as the deranged waxwork artist Professor Henry Jarrod, the film was a reworking of a story first filmed by another highly talented Hungarian ?gr?Michael Curtiz (as The Mystery of the Wax Museum, 1933).